By William Fisher
“Rosy official statements” from top US military brass are misleading the American people into believing our occupation of Afghanistan is yielding solid results toward building a sustainable democracy.
Instead, says Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis – who traveled more than 9,000 miles and “talked, traveled and patrolled with troops in Kandahar, Kunar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktika, Kunduz, Balkh, Nangarhar and other provinces,” I witnessed the “absence of success on virtually every level,” Col. Davis said.
Col. Davis said that in his travels, he “saw the incredible difficulties any military force would have to pacify even a single area of any of those provinces; I heard many stories of how insurgents controlled virtually every piece of land beyond eyeshot of a U.S. or International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) base.”
He declares that he “saw little to no evidence the local governments were able to provide for the basic needs of the people. Some of the Afghan civilians I talked with said the people didn’t want to be connected to a predatory or incapable local government.”
He ads that, “From time to time, I observed Afghan Security forces collude with the insurgency.” He characterized their performance as “from bad to abysmal.”
While classification limits what he can say publicly, “I can say that such reports — mine and others’ — serve to illuminate the gulf between
conditions on the ground and official statements of progress.”
For example, he writes, on his first trip into the mountains of Kunar province near the Pakistan border to visit the troops of 1st Squadron, 32nd Cavalry. he arrived at an Afghan National Police (ANP) station that had reported being attacked by the Taliban 2½ hours earlier, he said.
“Through the interpreter, I asked the police captain where the attack had originated, and he pointed to the side of a nearby mountain. “What are your normal procedures in situations like these?” I asked. “Do you form up a squad and go after them? Do you periodically send out harassing patrols? What do you do?”
“As the interpreter conveyed my questions, the captain’s head wheeled around, looking first at the interpreter and turning to me with an incredulous expression. Then he laughed. ‘No! We don’t go after them,” he said. “That would be dangerous!’ “
“According to the cavalry troopers, the Afghan policemen rarely leave the cover of the checkpoints. In that part of the province, the Taliban literally run free,” he said.
“In June, I was in the Zharay district of Kandahar province, returning to a base from a dismounted patrol. Gunshots were audible as the Taliban attacked a U.S. checkpoint about one mile away.
“As I entered the unit’s command post, the commander and his staff were watching a live video feed of the battle. Two ANP vehicles were blocking the main road leading to the site of the attack. The fire was coming from behind a haystack.
“We watched as two Afghan men emerged, mounted a motorcycle and began moving toward the Afghan policemen in their vehicles. The U.S. commander turned around and told the Afghan radio operator to make sure the policemen halted the men. The radio operator shouted into the radio repeatedly, but got no answer.
“On the screen, we watched as the two men slowly motored past the ANP vehicles. The policemen neither got out to stop the two men nor answered the radio — until the motorcycle was out of sight.
“To a man, the U.S. officers in that unit told me they had nothing but contempt for the Afghan troops in their area — and that was before the above incident occurred.
In August, Davis went on a dismounted patrol with troops in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province. Several troops from the unit had recently been killed in action, one of whom was a very popular and experienced soldier. One of the unit’s senior officers rhetorically asked me, “How do I look these men in the eye and ask them to go out day after day on these missions? What’s harder: How do I look [my soldier’s] wife in the eye when I get back and tell her that her husband died for something meaningful? How do I do that?”
What I saw bore no resemblance to rosy official statements by U.S. military leaders about conditions on the ground. Entering this deployment, I was sincerely hoping to learn that the claims were true: that conditions in Afghanistan were improving, that the local government and military were progressing toward self-sufficiency. I did not need to witness dramatic improvements to be reassured, but merely hoped to see evidence of positive trends, to see companies or battalions produce even minimal but
sustainable progress.
Davis arrived in country in late 2010 for the start of my fourth combat deployment, and my second in Afghanistan. A Regular Army officer in the Armor Branch, I served in Operation Desert Storm, in Afghanistan in 2005-06 and in Iraq in 2008-09. In the middle of my career, I spent eight years in the U.S. Army Reserve and held a number of civilian jobs — among them, legislative correspondent for defense and foreign affairs for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.
He says he interviewed or had conversations with more than 250 soldiers in the field, from the lowest-ranking 19-year-old private to division
commanders and staff members at every echelon. I spoke at length with Afghan security officials, Afghan civilians and a few village elders.
On Sept. 11, the 10th anniversary of the infamous attack on the U.S., Col. Davis visited another unit in Kunar province, this one near the town of Asmar, and “talked with the local official who served as the cultural adviser to the U.S. commander.”
“Here’s how the conversation went:”
Davis: “Here you have many units of the Afghan National Security Forces [ANSF]. Will they be able to hold out against the Taliban when U.S. troops leave this area?”
Adviser: “No. They are definitely not capable. Already all across this region [many elements of] the security forces have made deals with the Taliban. [The ANSF] won’t shoot at the Taliban, and the Taliban won’t shoot them. “Also, when a Taliban member is arrested, he is soon released with no action taken against him. So when the Taliban returns [when the Americans leave after 2014], so too go the jobs, especially for everyone like me who has worked with the coalition.”
“Recently, I got a cellphone call from a Talib who had captured a friend of mine. While I could hear, he began to beat him, telling me I’d better quit working for the Americans. I could hear my friend crying out in pain. [The Talib] said the next time they would kidnap my sons and do the same to them.
“Because of the direct threats, I’ve had to take my children out of school just to keep them safe. “And last night, right on that mountain there [he pointed to a ridge overlooking the U.S. base, about 700 meters distant], a member of the ANP was murdered. The Taliban came and called him out, kidnapped him in front of his parents, and took him away and murdered him. He was a member of the ANP from another province and had come back to visit his parents. He was only 27 years old. The people are not safe anywhere.”
“That murder took place within view of the U.S. base, a post nominally responsible for the security of an area of hundreds of square kilometers. Imagine how insecure the population is beyond visual range. And yet that conversation was representative of what I saw in many regions of Afghanistan.”
“In all of the places I visited, the tactical situation was bad to abysmal. If the events I have described — and many, many more I could mention — had been in the first year of war, or even the third or fourth, one might be willing to believe that Afghanistan was just a hard fight, and we should stick it out,” He said, adding:
“Yet these incidents all happened in the 10th year of war. As the numbers depicting casualties and enemy violence indicate the absence of progress, so too did my observations of the tactical situation all over Afghanistan.”
Davis notes that Anthony Cordesman, on behalf of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, wrote that ISAF and the U.S. leadership failed to report accurately on the reality of the situation in Afghanistan.
“Since June 2010, the unclassified reporting the U.S. does provide has steadily shrunk in content, effectively ‘spinning’ the road to victory by eliminating content that illustrates the full scale of the challenges ahead,” Cordesman wrote.
“They also, however, were driven by political decisions to ignore or understate Taliban and insurgent gains from 2002 to 2009, to ignore the problems caused by weak and corrupt Afghan governance, to understate the risks posed by sanctuaries in Pakistan, and to ‘spin’ the value of tactical ISAF victories while ignoring the steady growth of Taliban influence and control.”
“Year after year, the congressionally mandated reports from the Government Accountability Office revealed significant problems and warned that the system was in danger of failing. Each year, the Army’s senior leaders told members of Congress at hearings that GAO didn’t really understand the full picture and that to the contrary, the program was on schedule, on budget, and headed for success,” he said.
“Ultimately, of course, the program was canceled, with little but spinoffs to
show for $18 billion spent.”
Davis concluded: “If Americans were able to compare the public statements many of our leaders have made with classified data, this credibility gulf would be immediately observable. Naturally, I am not authorized to divulge classified material to the public. But I am legally able to share it with members of Congress. I have accordingly provided a much fuller accounting in a classified report to several members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans, senators and House members.”
Unlike most whistleblowers, Davis did not report up his chain of command. Instead, he sent a report to Congress, another to the Defense Department’s Inspector General, and released a third for public consumption via the civilian press.
It remains unclear how the military will treat Davis’ unusual form of whistleblowing.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Monday, February 13, 2012
Judith Miller Defends “The Hunted Men Who Brought Growth and Reform” to Egypt
Judith Miller, you may recall, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning ex-New York Times journalist who left the paper after it was discovered that she was Bush-era Vice President Dick Cheney’s “stenographer.” A Times investigation found serious errors in many of her stories about weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Iraq War. She also spent three months in jail for refusing to reveal her sources in the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame’s identity.
.
Well, Judy’s at it again!
She is trying to gin up support for two Egyptian men who have been convicted of corruption, and who are currently in exile.
The subjects of Miller’s current defense are Youssef Boutros Ghali, the former finance minister of Egypt, who Miller says was “once the highest-ranking Coptic Christian in the country since the revolution,” and Rachid Mohamed Rachid, who became Egypt's Minister of Foreign Trade and Industry in July 2004. Two years later, the ministry was expanded to include domestic trade within Egypt and was renamed the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI). He has been described as the first businessman ever to hold a cabinet position in Egypt and as a reformer.
Writing in the conservative journal, Newsmax, Miller says, Only a year ago, Ghali was among Egypt's most prominent officials. “With a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he had given up a lucrative post at the International Monetary Fund to return to Cairo 18 years ago to help transform his nation's moribund state-owned economy.”
She added, “On several key issues, the reformers had finally won, making Egypt what the IMF called an ‘emerging success story,’ one of the region's ‘fastest-growing economies’."
“But since the January 2011 uprising at Tahrir Square, which toppled President Hosni Mubarak in only 18 days, the military-led civilian transitional government has been waging a judicial jihad against Ghali and others who helped free Egypt's economy,” she wrote.
Characterizing the two exiles as economic heroes, Miller said, “Once credited by U.S. officials for policies producing annual growth of some 7 percent for several years — foreign and domestic investment in industries that private investors had once shunned, and robust job creation — they have now been blamed not only for a culture of corruption that is nearly as old as Egypt's pyramids, but also for Mubarak's political failings.”
“Although the free-market policies resulted in a more equitable distribution of income than that of India, Mexico, Brazil, and several other emerging economies, the reformers are now hunted men,” she said.
Convicted by a Cairo criminal court of "squandering public resources," based on often bogus evidence in sham trials that in Ghali's case lasted only six minutes, they are either in jail, in exile, or on the run.
“Travel bans and Interpol warrants have been issued for them, passports canceled, visas revoked, and their property and other assets in Egypt have been frozen…The scapegoating of the reformers and the reversal of their policies have increased the likelihood of an economic meltdown,” she wrote.
In an interview, Rachid said that to reignite growth, Egypt must restore security, install a government that can rule for three or four years, rather than three or four months, and finally, stop attacking the free-market system for short-term political gain. "Without this, investor confidence in Egypt will not be restored," he warned.
Miller continues: “The reformers are now widely dispersed, exchanging news and political gossip through emails and by cellphone.”
Some, like Ghali and Rachid, “the first businessman ever to hold a senior Cabinet post in Egypt, have sought refuge in other countries. Others, like Ahmed Maghrabi, the former minister of housing, and Yusuf Wali, the former agriculture minister who hails from one of Egypt's most prominent land-owning clans, are in jail.”
“Once-powerful men courted by the world's financial elite, they are now largely isolated, abandoned by the country they struggled to change. Most have been assailed by Egypt's vituperative, scandal-mongering press,” she wrote.
After the six-minute trial in June, Ghali was convicted in absentia and sentenced to 30 years in prison for allegedly using a Finance Ministry printer in 2010 to produce election materials for his campaign for parliament. American officials say he was also convicted of squandering public money by using 102 cars held in customs for his personal use.
Ghali's lawyer had said that some 100 cars had been impounded for customs duty violations, and that Ghali had given them not to family or friends, but to fellow ministers and his own deputies who were entitled to official cars, but whose cars were old and kept breaking down. The transaction had saved Egyptian taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds, Miller wrote.
She continued: “Diplomats say Ghali's efforts to reform Egypt's bureaucracy required creative maneuvering. In 2004, the Finance Ministry, with its 20,000 employees and $50 million budget, had almost no computers. The ministry's two word-processors were reserved for the minister's office, which meant that Egypt's budget, all 49,000 accounts of it, had to be calculated and consolidated by hand. No ministry knew the size of another's budget, and the military liked it that way.”
“The revolution, with its insistence on Islam as the source of Egyptian identity, coupled with the military's traditional hostility to Christians, does not bode well for secular, pro-Western activists like Ghali.”
“Until he was named finance minister, no Copt had ever risen to so high a civilian post in modern times. Even then, a few extremist Salafi sheiks issued fatwas denouncing his promotion: Islam prohibited putting Christians in charge of Muslim treasure, they opined.”
Miller wrote that many of the “most savage attacks on Ghali in the Egyptian press have directly or indirectly touched on his religion, implying that a Christian's loyalty to Egypt may be questioned.”
Miller concludes: “Many Egyptians, friends say, are gradually acknowledging that those they have banished may not be corrupt, and that even if some of them are, Egypt's poverty and income disparities cannot be mainly their fault.”
Seeking confirmation of Miller’s assertions, we asked for the opinion of one of the most widely respected of Egypt scholars, Egyptian-born Samer Shehata, professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University.
Here’s what he told us:
“I read the article when it came out and it is filled with inaccuracies and distortions. For example, Ms. Miller claims that, until Ghali, no Copt had ever risen to such a high position. In fact, his uncle Boutrus, was Foreign Minister under Sadat.”
Shehata concedes that “Ghali might not have been as corrupt as Ahmed Ezz (the billionaire steel tycoon who has emerged as perhaps the most hated symbol of the old system) but there is absolutely no doubt that he misused the 100 plus cars for personal use and advantage. We know this beyond doubt.”
Shehata continues: Ghali was part of a criminal regime justifying their actions, economic, political, etc. And although there were likely some bigoted reports about him in the press, the primary reason he is despised in Egypt has nothing to do with his religion (nor is it framed as such) but about his real estate tax plan, being part of the regime, and other more specific allegations.”
Shehata concludes: “Miller is hardly a serious journalist.”
Welcome back, Judy. Dick Cheney would be proud of you.
Well, Judy’s at it again!
She is trying to gin up support for two Egyptian men who have been convicted of corruption, and who are currently in exile.
The subjects of Miller’s current defense are Youssef Boutros Ghali, the former finance minister of Egypt, who Miller says was “once the highest-ranking Coptic Christian in the country since the revolution,” and Rachid Mohamed Rachid, who became Egypt's Minister of Foreign Trade and Industry in July 2004. Two years later, the ministry was expanded to include domestic trade within Egypt and was renamed the Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI). He has been described as the first businessman ever to hold a cabinet position in Egypt and as a reformer.
Writing in the conservative journal, Newsmax, Miller says, Only a year ago, Ghali was among Egypt's most prominent officials. “With a doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he had given up a lucrative post at the International Monetary Fund to return to Cairo 18 years ago to help transform his nation's moribund state-owned economy.”
She added, “On several key issues, the reformers had finally won, making Egypt what the IMF called an ‘emerging success story,’ one of the region's ‘fastest-growing economies’."
“But since the January 2011 uprising at Tahrir Square, which toppled President Hosni Mubarak in only 18 days, the military-led civilian transitional government has been waging a judicial jihad against Ghali and others who helped free Egypt's economy,” she wrote.
Characterizing the two exiles as economic heroes, Miller said, “Once credited by U.S. officials for policies producing annual growth of some 7 percent for several years — foreign and domestic investment in industries that private investors had once shunned, and robust job creation — they have now been blamed not only for a culture of corruption that is nearly as old as Egypt's pyramids, but also for Mubarak's political failings.”
“Although the free-market policies resulted in a more equitable distribution of income than that of India, Mexico, Brazil, and several other emerging economies, the reformers are now hunted men,” she said.
Convicted by a Cairo criminal court of "squandering public resources," based on often bogus evidence in sham trials that in Ghali's case lasted only six minutes, they are either in jail, in exile, or on the run.
“Travel bans and Interpol warrants have been issued for them, passports canceled, visas revoked, and their property and other assets in Egypt have been frozen…The scapegoating of the reformers and the reversal of their policies have increased the likelihood of an economic meltdown,” she wrote.
In an interview, Rachid said that to reignite growth, Egypt must restore security, install a government that can rule for three or four years, rather than three or four months, and finally, stop attacking the free-market system for short-term political gain. "Without this, investor confidence in Egypt will not be restored," he warned.
Miller continues: “The reformers are now widely dispersed, exchanging news and political gossip through emails and by cellphone.”
Some, like Ghali and Rachid, “the first businessman ever to hold a senior Cabinet post in Egypt, have sought refuge in other countries. Others, like Ahmed Maghrabi, the former minister of housing, and Yusuf Wali, the former agriculture minister who hails from one of Egypt's most prominent land-owning clans, are in jail.”
“Once-powerful men courted by the world's financial elite, they are now largely isolated, abandoned by the country they struggled to change. Most have been assailed by Egypt's vituperative, scandal-mongering press,” she wrote.
After the six-minute trial in June, Ghali was convicted in absentia and sentenced to 30 years in prison for allegedly using a Finance Ministry printer in 2010 to produce election materials for his campaign for parliament. American officials say he was also convicted of squandering public money by using 102 cars held in customs for his personal use.
Ghali's lawyer had said that some 100 cars had been impounded for customs duty violations, and that Ghali had given them not to family or friends, but to fellow ministers and his own deputies who were entitled to official cars, but whose cars were old and kept breaking down. The transaction had saved Egyptian taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds, Miller wrote.
She continued: “Diplomats say Ghali's efforts to reform Egypt's bureaucracy required creative maneuvering. In 2004, the Finance Ministry, with its 20,000 employees and $50 million budget, had almost no computers. The ministry's two word-processors were reserved for the minister's office, which meant that Egypt's budget, all 49,000 accounts of it, had to be calculated and consolidated by hand. No ministry knew the size of another's budget, and the military liked it that way.”
“The revolution, with its insistence on Islam as the source of Egyptian identity, coupled with the military's traditional hostility to Christians, does not bode well for secular, pro-Western activists like Ghali.”
“Until he was named finance minister, no Copt had ever risen to so high a civilian post in modern times. Even then, a few extremist Salafi sheiks issued fatwas denouncing his promotion: Islam prohibited putting Christians in charge of Muslim treasure, they opined.”
Miller wrote that many of the “most savage attacks on Ghali in the Egyptian press have directly or indirectly touched on his religion, implying that a Christian's loyalty to Egypt may be questioned.”
Miller concludes: “Many Egyptians, friends say, are gradually acknowledging that those they have banished may not be corrupt, and that even if some of them are, Egypt's poverty and income disparities cannot be mainly their fault.”
Seeking confirmation of Miller’s assertions, we asked for the opinion of one of the most widely respected of Egypt scholars, Egyptian-born Samer Shehata, professor of Arab politics at Georgetown University.
Here’s what he told us:
“I read the article when it came out and it is filled with inaccuracies and distortions. For example, Ms. Miller claims that, until Ghali, no Copt had ever risen to such a high position. In fact, his uncle Boutrus, was Foreign Minister under Sadat.”
Shehata concedes that “Ghali might not have been as corrupt as Ahmed Ezz (the billionaire steel tycoon who has emerged as perhaps the most hated symbol of the old system) but there is absolutely no doubt that he misused the 100 plus cars for personal use and advantage. We know this beyond doubt.”
Shehata continues: Ghali was part of a criminal regime justifying their actions, economic, political, etc. And although there were likely some bigoted reports about him in the press, the primary reason he is despised in Egypt has nothing to do with his religion (nor is it framed as such) but about his real estate tax plan, being part of the regime, and other more specific allegations.”
Shehata concludes: “Miller is hardly a serious journalist.”
Welcome back, Judy. Dick Cheney would be proud of you.
Iraq on Verge of Violent Chaos
By William Fisher
As Iraq proceeds with its grisly hangathon -- since the beginning of 2012, Iraq has executed at least 65 prisoners – and 2007-type violence is threatening to bring the country to its knees, Iraq scholars are pointing to even deeper signs that the country is on the precipice of collapse.
Days after the last US troops departed, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki moved to indict Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi on terrorism charges and sought to remove Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq from his position.
According to Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), Maliki’s move triggered “a major political crisis that fully revealed Iraq as an unstable, undemocratic country governed by raw competition for power and barely affected by institutional arrangements. Large-scale violence immediately flared up again, with a series of terrorist attacks against mostly Shi’i targets reminiscent of the worst days of 2006.”
“But there is more to the crisis than an escalation of violence. The tenuous political agreement among parties and factions reached at the end of 2010 has collapsed. The government of national unity has stopped functioning, and provinces that want to become regions with autonomous powers comparable to Kurdistan’s are putting increasing pressure on the central government. Unless a new political agreement is reached soon, Iraq may plunge into civil war or split apart,” she said, adding:
“The U.S. occupation tried to superimpose on Iraq a set of political rules that did not reflect either the dominant culture or the power relations among political forces. And while cultures and power relations are not immutable, they do not change on demand to accommodate the goals of outsiders.”
Ottoway believes that Iraq “is facing a real threat of political disintegration.” She reminds us that in 2007, “the United States held the country together forcibly, but the infusion of new troops could not secure a lasting agreement among Iraqis.”
However, she said,” This time, the outcome depends on whether the political factions that dominate Iraq and tear it apart find it in their interest to forge a real compromise or conclude that they would benefit more from going in separate directions.”
Ottoway concludes: The government of national unity has stopped functioning, and provinces that want to become regions with autonomous powers comparable to Kurdistan’s are putting increasing pressure on the central government. Unless a new political agreement is reached soon, Iraq may plunge into civil war or split apart.
Meantime, Iraq is evidently shooting to overtake China and Iran as the world-wide leader in executions. Human Rights groups, the United Nations, and others, are aiming dire warnings toward Iraq.
For example, Human Rights Watch is calling on Iraqi authorities to halt executions and abolish the death penalty. HRW’s Joe Stork said Iraq must overhaul its justice system. The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, called the numerous executions “terrifying.”
Pillay said she was shocked at reports that 34 individuals, including two women, were executed in Iraq on 19 January following their conviction for various crimes.
“Even if the most scrupulous fair trial standards were observed, this would be a terrifying number of executions to take place in a single day,” Pillay said.
She added: “Given the lack of transparency in court proceedings, major concerns about due process and fairness of trials, and the very wide range of offences for which the death penalty can be imposed in Iraq, it is a truly shocking figure.”
Iraqi authorities should halt all executions and abolish the death penalty, HRW said. Since the beginning of 2012, Iraq has executed at least 65 prisoners, 51 of them in January, and 14 more on February 8, for various offenses.“The Iraqi government seems to have given state executioners the green light to execute at will,”said Joe Stork, deputy HRW’s Deputy Middle East director. “The government needs to declare an immediate moratorium on all executions and begin an overhaul of its flawed criminal justice system.”HRW is particularly concerned that Iraqi courts admit as evidence confessions obtained under coercion. It says the government should disclose the identities, locations, and status of all prisoners on death row, the crimes for which they have been convicted, court records for their being charged, tried, and sentenced, and details of any impending executions.
A Justice Ministry official confirmed to Human Rights Watch on February 8 that authorities had executed 14 prisoners earlier in the day. “You should expect more executions in the coming days and weeks,” the official added.According to the United Nations, more than 1,200 people are believed to have been sentenced to death in Iraq since 2004. The number of prisoners executed during that period has not been revealed publicly. Iraqi law authorizes the death penalty for close to 50 crimes, including terrorism, kidnapping, and murder, but also including such offenses as damage to public property.Criminal trials in Iraq often violate minimum guarantees, Human Rights Watch said. Many defendants are unable to pursue a meaningful defense or to challenge evidence against them, and lengthy pretrial detention without judicial review is common.
The total number of individuals sentenced to death in Iraq since 2004 is believed to stand at more than 1,200. “Most disturbingly,” said Pillay, “we do not have a single report of anyone on death row being pardoned, despite the fact there are well documented cases of confessions being extracted under duress.”
“I call on the Government of Iraq to implement an immediate moratorium on the institution of death penalty,” the High Commissioner said, noting that around 150 countries have now either abolished the death penalty in law or in practice, or introduced a moratorium.
As Iraq proceeds with its grisly hangathon -- since the beginning of 2012, Iraq has executed at least 65 prisoners – and 2007-type violence is threatening to bring the country to its knees, Iraq scholars are pointing to even deeper signs that the country is on the precipice of collapse.
Days after the last US troops departed, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki moved to indict Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi on terrorism charges and sought to remove Deputy Prime Minister Saleh al-Mutlaq from his position.
According to Marina Ottaway of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), Maliki’s move triggered “a major political crisis that fully revealed Iraq as an unstable, undemocratic country governed by raw competition for power and barely affected by institutional arrangements. Large-scale violence immediately flared up again, with a series of terrorist attacks against mostly Shi’i targets reminiscent of the worst days of 2006.”
“But there is more to the crisis than an escalation of violence. The tenuous political agreement among parties and factions reached at the end of 2010 has collapsed. The government of national unity has stopped functioning, and provinces that want to become regions with autonomous powers comparable to Kurdistan’s are putting increasing pressure on the central government. Unless a new political agreement is reached soon, Iraq may plunge into civil war or split apart,” she said, adding:
“The U.S. occupation tried to superimpose on Iraq a set of political rules that did not reflect either the dominant culture or the power relations among political forces. And while cultures and power relations are not immutable, they do not change on demand to accommodate the goals of outsiders.”
Ottoway believes that Iraq “is facing a real threat of political disintegration.” She reminds us that in 2007, “the United States held the country together forcibly, but the infusion of new troops could not secure a lasting agreement among Iraqis.”
However, she said,” This time, the outcome depends on whether the political factions that dominate Iraq and tear it apart find it in their interest to forge a real compromise or conclude that they would benefit more from going in separate directions.”
Ottoway concludes: The government of national unity has stopped functioning, and provinces that want to become regions with autonomous powers comparable to Kurdistan’s are putting increasing pressure on the central government. Unless a new political agreement is reached soon, Iraq may plunge into civil war or split apart.
Meantime, Iraq is evidently shooting to overtake China and Iran as the world-wide leader in executions. Human Rights groups, the United Nations, and others, are aiming dire warnings toward Iraq.
For example, Human Rights Watch is calling on Iraqi authorities to halt executions and abolish the death penalty. HRW’s Joe Stork said Iraq must overhaul its justice system. The UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, called the numerous executions “terrifying.”
Pillay said she was shocked at reports that 34 individuals, including two women, were executed in Iraq on 19 January following their conviction for various crimes.
“Even if the most scrupulous fair trial standards were observed, this would be a terrifying number of executions to take place in a single day,” Pillay said.
She added: “Given the lack of transparency in court proceedings, major concerns about due process and fairness of trials, and the very wide range of offences for which the death penalty can be imposed in Iraq, it is a truly shocking figure.”
Iraqi authorities should halt all executions and abolish the death penalty, HRW said. Since the beginning of 2012, Iraq has executed at least 65 prisoners, 51 of them in January, and 14 more on February 8, for various offenses.“The Iraqi government seems to have given state executioners the green light to execute at will,”said Joe Stork, deputy HRW’s Deputy Middle East director. “The government needs to declare an immediate moratorium on all executions and begin an overhaul of its flawed criminal justice system.”HRW is particularly concerned that Iraqi courts admit as evidence confessions obtained under coercion. It says the government should disclose the identities, locations, and status of all prisoners on death row, the crimes for which they have been convicted, court records for their being charged, tried, and sentenced, and details of any impending executions.
A Justice Ministry official confirmed to Human Rights Watch on February 8 that authorities had executed 14 prisoners earlier in the day. “You should expect more executions in the coming days and weeks,” the official added.According to the United Nations, more than 1,200 people are believed to have been sentenced to death in Iraq since 2004. The number of prisoners executed during that period has not been revealed publicly. Iraqi law authorizes the death penalty for close to 50 crimes, including terrorism, kidnapping, and murder, but also including such offenses as damage to public property.Criminal trials in Iraq often violate minimum guarantees, Human Rights Watch said. Many defendants are unable to pursue a meaningful defense or to challenge evidence against them, and lengthy pretrial detention without judicial review is common.
The total number of individuals sentenced to death in Iraq since 2004 is believed to stand at more than 1,200. “Most disturbingly,” said Pillay, “we do not have a single report of anyone on death row being pardoned, despite the fact there are well documented cases of confessions being extracted under duress.”
“I call on the Government of Iraq to implement an immediate moratorium on the institution of death penalty,” the High Commissioner said, noting that around 150 countries have now either abolished the death penalty in law or in practice, or introduced a moratorium.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Egypt: The Army’s Chess Match?
Egypt: The Army’s Chess Match?
By William Fisher
Tensions between long-standing allies Egypt and the US climbed to a new high this week as Egypt’s ruling generals arrested 43 employees of the country’s non-profit non-governmental human rights organizations – including several from the US
But many are suggesting that the US organizations are simply being used as pawns in a larger game -- the military’s increasingly desperate efforts to make a deal with the country’s Muslim Brotherhood that would define and secure the Army’s role in the future Egypt.
The Background: Last week the Egyptian Ministry of Justice swooped down on the offices of all the major non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the country, searched the offices, confiscated computers and other files, and arrested 43 employees and charged them with "accepting funds and benefits from an international organization" to pursue activities "prohibited by law" and carrying out “political training programs.”
Accepting foreign funds was Mubarak’s bogeyman under his repressive and restrictive NGO law. Now that law has been held over by Mubarak’s successors, the military, which threatens to make it even more draconian.
In a letter to the SCAF (the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces), Daphne McCurdy, a Senior Research Associate with the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) said: These groups have worked transparently and in cooperation with Egyptian authorities to help support Egypt’s democratic transition—a goal to which the ruling military council purports to be committed. Sixteen of those charged are American citizens, seriously threatening the future of the U.S.-Egypt relationship.”
This controversy is merely the latest chapter in a series of attacks against both Egyptian and international civil society organizations that escalated shortly after the ouster of President Mubarak one year ago.
The Egyptians gave Washington a heads-up regarding likely future developments back in July, when SCAF Major General Assar gave a talk at the United States Institute for Peace in Washington DC, in which he said that foreign funding to NGOs without government pre-approval “represents a danger, in light of the recent incidents where many police weaponry was lost, and about 20,000 prisoners escaped from the prisons of Egypt following the events experienced by the country.”
Later that month, Field Marshall Tantawy, head of the SCAF, said in an address to officers that “there are foreign players who feed and set up specific projects that some individuals carry out domestically, without understanding. It is possible that there is lack of understanding, that foreign players are pushing the people into inappropriate directions [since they do] not want stability for Egypt."
It’s now clear that the government’s “investigation” into NGOs has been ongoing for months and that dozens of other organizations are also at risk. A leaked ministry of justice report in September 2011 listed 39 of the most vocal human rights organizations in Egypt as not registered under the Associations Law and said a further 28 were receiving foreign funds without prior authorization. The vast majority of those named were human rights and democracy organizations.
POMED, the influential Project on Middle East Democracy, reported that US authorities and human rights advocates expressed displeasure with the SCAF investigation. For example, the group said, while excerpts of the investigation’s report were leaked to the Egyptian press in September, the official report has never been made public nor have suspects been officially notified of the charges against them.
POMED also declared that it was not until IRI employee Sam LaHood – son of President Obama’s Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood -- arrived at Cairo’s airport and was prohibited from boarding a flight that suspects were made aware that they were barred from travel.
POMED is a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Washington, DC, dedicated to examining how genuine democracies can develop in the Middle East and how the United States can best support that process.
Most recently, the Ministry of Justice announced it was referring 43 individuals to face trial, but the formal charges have yet to be delivered to the suspects. U.S. policymakers have also received inconsistent messages from the Egyptian government, as the ruling military council and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have sought to reassure the U.S. government and targeted organizations while the Ministry of Justice and Minister Aboul Naga have struck a defiant tone.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which earlier endorsed the investigation, denounced the American reaction to the NGO probe as inconsistent. “America does not allow any foreign organization to open branches and operate without a permit," said Brotherhood Spokesperson Mahmoud Ghazlan. U.S. lawmakers have threatened to halt the $1.3 billion in promised military aid to Egypt in response to the investigation.
Generally being overlooked is that the organizations whose offices were raided and employees arrested have been well known to the Mubarak government – and approved, tacitly and overtly, for many years. Mubarak’s NGO law made it extremely difficult to operate in the human rights, democracy-building, and related fields. There were occasional prosecutions for accepting foreign funds without prior approval.
That’s what’s going on at the surface. But the backstory is far more Machiavellian, according to one of the most credible witnesses to the current scene in Egypt. He is Samer S. Shehata, Assistant Professor of Arab Politics at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington.
We asked Prof. Shehata if the Egyptians should be prosecuting these NGOs.
His answer: “Of course not. There is no justification for prosecuting or harassing these organizations. Many of them were in operation with the full knowledge of the government previously. Moreover, their activities are not detrimental to the political process or sovereignty.”
He said the question facing the government vis a vis NGOs is whether in the post-Mubarak Egypt, the procedures for establishing an NGO will be made easier, transparent and standard.”
But Shehata emphasized his view that, “I don't think the moves against these organizations have much to do with what these organizations actually do (or what they did). This is political hardball between the SCAF and the US administration. One must assume that the SCAF knows what they are doing (escalating the challenge with the US administration) and they are trying to signal to the Obama administration that the US should not get involved or voice opinions regarding Egypt's internal politics in the next, crucial period, in which some kind of a "transition" will be worked out between domestic political forces, most importantly the Muslim Brothers and the military, about the future shape of Egyptian politics.”
He added, “I think the issue of the NGOs is being used in a much larger and more important attempt to limit US statements and actions in the coming period.”
Shehata cautioned that commenting on the current NGO problem requires a certain degree of “reading the tea leaves.”
“The best assessment -- and the one that makes the most sense -- in this period is that “the actions against the NGOs signal to other NGOs in Egypt concerned with human rights, personal and political freedoms workers' rights, etc. that the regime/SCAF could move against them. It must be a tremendous disincentive to vigorously criticize the current state of affairs, SCAF's responsibility or the ‘transition’ period for many other domestic organizations.”
Shehata was asked, “What should the response of the US be vis a vis military aid, and where's it all going to end?”
He replied, “I can only imagine that the Egyptian regime will eventually drop the charges against the Americans affiliated with these NGOs, allowing them to leave the country and avoid any kind of prosecution.”
Other observers tell much the same story. For example, Prof. Lawrence Davidson of West Chester University told us, “My guess is that this is part of an unwritten agreement between the generals and the Muslim Brothers. If you look at who these NGOs were helping, it was the elements that stand in opposition to both the Islamists and the army. It might be that going after these groups is the price the Egyptian generals have to pay to keep the Muslim Brotherhood from sending their followers into the streets to join the liberal/secular/youth folks presently protesting.”
Back in Washington, the NGO situation created a firestorm of protest, with Senators warning of a “Disastrous” Rupture of U.S.-Egypt Ties. In a statement, US Senators John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, and Joe Lieberman warned Egypt's government that the ongoing investigation into foreign-funded nongovernmental organizations could result in a "disastrous" rupture in ties with the US, saying, "harassment and prosecution" of US citizens must end, and "support for Egypt, including continued financial assistance, is in jeopardy.”
In an article published yesterday, Amnesty International said that NGOs in Egypt were being held "hostage," and called for the "repressive laws on civil society" to be scrapped. "These international associations have become the latest scapegoats as the authorities desperately spin their story of foreign conspiracies," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program.
But Egyptian Prime Minister Kamal Al Ganzouri dug his heels in, declaring that Egypt "will not kneel" and "will not change [its] stance because of American aid."
The response to the Prime Minister’s bravado comes from Joe Stork, the veteran official of Human Rights Watch (HRW).
He said, “The Egyptian authorities are using a discredited Mubarak-era law to prosecute nongovernmental groups while proposing even more restrictive legislation. The government should stop using the old law, halt the criminal investigations, and propose a law that respects international standards.”
He concluded: “This campaign targets the Egyptian human rights and democracy groups that were prevented from registering by Mubarak’s security forces. Foreign funding is their lifeline. Egypt’s military government is now using the kind of tactics used by Zimbabwe and Ethiopia to silence independent voices.”
.
By William Fisher
Tensions between long-standing allies Egypt and the US climbed to a new high this week as Egypt’s ruling generals arrested 43 employees of the country’s non-profit non-governmental human rights organizations – including several from the US
But many are suggesting that the US organizations are simply being used as pawns in a larger game -- the military’s increasingly desperate efforts to make a deal with the country’s Muslim Brotherhood that would define and secure the Army’s role in the future Egypt.
The Background: Last week the Egyptian Ministry of Justice swooped down on the offices of all the major non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the country, searched the offices, confiscated computers and other files, and arrested 43 employees and charged them with "accepting funds and benefits from an international organization" to pursue activities "prohibited by law" and carrying out “political training programs.”
Accepting foreign funds was Mubarak’s bogeyman under his repressive and restrictive NGO law. Now that law has been held over by Mubarak’s successors, the military, which threatens to make it even more draconian.
In a letter to the SCAF (the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces), Daphne McCurdy, a Senior Research Associate with the Project on Middle East Democracy (POMED) said: These groups have worked transparently and in cooperation with Egyptian authorities to help support Egypt’s democratic transition—a goal to which the ruling military council purports to be committed. Sixteen of those charged are American citizens, seriously threatening the future of the U.S.-Egypt relationship.”
This controversy is merely the latest chapter in a series of attacks against both Egyptian and international civil society organizations that escalated shortly after the ouster of President Mubarak one year ago.
The Egyptians gave Washington a heads-up regarding likely future developments back in July, when SCAF Major General Assar gave a talk at the United States Institute for Peace in Washington DC, in which he said that foreign funding to NGOs without government pre-approval “represents a danger, in light of the recent incidents where many police weaponry was lost, and about 20,000 prisoners escaped from the prisons of Egypt following the events experienced by the country.”
Later that month, Field Marshall Tantawy, head of the SCAF, said in an address to officers that “there are foreign players who feed and set up specific projects that some individuals carry out domestically, without understanding. It is possible that there is lack of understanding, that foreign players are pushing the people into inappropriate directions [since they do] not want stability for Egypt."
It’s now clear that the government’s “investigation” into NGOs has been ongoing for months and that dozens of other organizations are also at risk. A leaked ministry of justice report in September 2011 listed 39 of the most vocal human rights organizations in Egypt as not registered under the Associations Law and said a further 28 were receiving foreign funds without prior authorization. The vast majority of those named were human rights and democracy organizations.
POMED, the influential Project on Middle East Democracy, reported that US authorities and human rights advocates expressed displeasure with the SCAF investigation. For example, the group said, while excerpts of the investigation’s report were leaked to the Egyptian press in September, the official report has never been made public nor have suspects been officially notified of the charges against them.
POMED also declared that it was not until IRI employee Sam LaHood – son of President Obama’s Secretary of Transportation, Ray LaHood -- arrived at Cairo’s airport and was prohibited from boarding a flight that suspects were made aware that they were barred from travel.
POMED is a non-profit, non-partisan organization based in Washington, DC, dedicated to examining how genuine democracies can develop in the Middle East and how the United States can best support that process.
Most recently, the Ministry of Justice announced it was referring 43 individuals to face trial, but the formal charges have yet to be delivered to the suspects. U.S. policymakers have also received inconsistent messages from the Egyptian government, as the ruling military council and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have sought to reassure the U.S. government and targeted organizations while the Ministry of Justice and Minister Aboul Naga have struck a defiant tone.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which earlier endorsed the investigation, denounced the American reaction to the NGO probe as inconsistent. “America does not allow any foreign organization to open branches and operate without a permit," said Brotherhood Spokesperson Mahmoud Ghazlan. U.S. lawmakers have threatened to halt the $1.3 billion in promised military aid to Egypt in response to the investigation.
Generally being overlooked is that the organizations whose offices were raided and employees arrested have been well known to the Mubarak government – and approved, tacitly and overtly, for many years. Mubarak’s NGO law made it extremely difficult to operate in the human rights, democracy-building, and related fields. There were occasional prosecutions for accepting foreign funds without prior approval.
That’s what’s going on at the surface. But the backstory is far more Machiavellian, according to one of the most credible witnesses to the current scene in Egypt. He is Samer S. Shehata, Assistant Professor of Arab Politics at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington.
We asked Prof. Shehata if the Egyptians should be prosecuting these NGOs.
His answer: “Of course not. There is no justification for prosecuting or harassing these organizations. Many of them were in operation with the full knowledge of the government previously. Moreover, their activities are not detrimental to the political process or sovereignty.”
He said the question facing the government vis a vis NGOs is whether in the post-Mubarak Egypt, the procedures for establishing an NGO will be made easier, transparent and standard.”
But Shehata emphasized his view that, “I don't think the moves against these organizations have much to do with what these organizations actually do (or what they did). This is political hardball between the SCAF and the US administration. One must assume that the SCAF knows what they are doing (escalating the challenge with the US administration) and they are trying to signal to the Obama administration that the US should not get involved or voice opinions regarding Egypt's internal politics in the next, crucial period, in which some kind of a "transition" will be worked out between domestic political forces, most importantly the Muslim Brothers and the military, about the future shape of Egyptian politics.”
He added, “I think the issue of the NGOs is being used in a much larger and more important attempt to limit US statements and actions in the coming period.”
Shehata cautioned that commenting on the current NGO problem requires a certain degree of “reading the tea leaves.”
“The best assessment -- and the one that makes the most sense -- in this period is that “the actions against the NGOs signal to other NGOs in Egypt concerned with human rights, personal and political freedoms workers' rights, etc. that the regime/SCAF could move against them. It must be a tremendous disincentive to vigorously criticize the current state of affairs, SCAF's responsibility or the ‘transition’ period for many other domestic organizations.”
Shehata was asked, “What should the response of the US be vis a vis military aid, and where's it all going to end?”
He replied, “I can only imagine that the Egyptian regime will eventually drop the charges against the Americans affiliated with these NGOs, allowing them to leave the country and avoid any kind of prosecution.”
Other observers tell much the same story. For example, Prof. Lawrence Davidson of West Chester University told us, “My guess is that this is part of an unwritten agreement between the generals and the Muslim Brothers. If you look at who these NGOs were helping, it was the elements that stand in opposition to both the Islamists and the army. It might be that going after these groups is the price the Egyptian generals have to pay to keep the Muslim Brotherhood from sending their followers into the streets to join the liberal/secular/youth folks presently protesting.”
Back in Washington, the NGO situation created a firestorm of protest, with Senators warning of a “Disastrous” Rupture of U.S.-Egypt Ties. In a statement, US Senators John McCain, Kelly Ayotte, and Joe Lieberman warned Egypt's government that the ongoing investigation into foreign-funded nongovernmental organizations could result in a "disastrous" rupture in ties with the US, saying, "harassment and prosecution" of US citizens must end, and "support for Egypt, including continued financial assistance, is in jeopardy.”
In an article published yesterday, Amnesty International said that NGOs in Egypt were being held "hostage," and called for the "repressive laws on civil society" to be scrapped. "These international associations have become the latest scapegoats as the authorities desperately spin their story of foreign conspiracies," said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Program.
But Egyptian Prime Minister Kamal Al Ganzouri dug his heels in, declaring that Egypt "will not kneel" and "will not change [its] stance because of American aid."
The response to the Prime Minister’s bravado comes from Joe Stork, the veteran official of Human Rights Watch (HRW).
He said, “The Egyptian authorities are using a discredited Mubarak-era law to prosecute nongovernmental groups while proposing even more restrictive legislation. The government should stop using the old law, halt the criminal investigations, and propose a law that respects international standards.”
He concluded: “This campaign targets the Egyptian human rights and democracy groups that were prevented from registering by Mubarak’s security forces. Foreign funding is their lifeline. Egypt’s military government is now using the kind of tactics used by Zimbabwe and Ethiopia to silence independent voices.”
.
Reigning in the Prosecutors
By William Fisher
Writing articles about prisoners on Death Row is easy. Even after conviction, nagging questions about guilt or innocence often remain. Most of the colorful characters in the original cast are still around. All the suspense of a good whodunit is still there.
That’s the easy part.
The hard part comes when it emerges that an innocent person has been sentenced to die for a crime he didn’t commit. And when the alleged reason is misconduct by the prosecutors.
Doing something about that is the hard part. Because prosecutors are powerful people.
And so it was with Tyrone Noling, who has been sitting on death row since 1990, when he was convicted of murdering an elderly couple.
In 2009, 13 years after the original trial, prosecutors provided defense attorneys with handwritten police notes from the investigations in 1990 in which a witness identified another man as having committed the murders.
But the state is currently refusing to test DNA evidence collected from the crime scene that might place this “other man” at the scene of the crime.
As in the case of Troy Davis, who was put to death in Georgia last year, at the time Noling was charged there was no physical evidence and no witnesses to the alleged crime.
But Andrew Cohen, writing in The Atlantic, points out that when an aggressive investigator took over the case, some witnesses began giving statements against Noling. Cohen adds that all these witnesses have since recanted their statements, claiming they were pressured by the prosecutor.
And the Death Penalty Information Center, in a statement, said, “We pause for a moment to highlight our concern about Noling's death sentence in light of questions raised regarding his prosecution. Noling was not indicted until five years after the…murders when a new local prosecutor took office. That new prosecutor pursued the cold murder case with suspicious vigor according to Noling's accusers, who have since recanted their stories and now claim that they only identified Noling as the murderer in the first place because they were threatened by the prosecutor.”
Nonetheless, Noling was convicted on that testimony and remains on death row.
What to do about it? Well, in such cases, organizations and individuals traditionally circulate petitions and contact their lawmakers. From time to time, we hear from the American Bar Association or the Association of Trial Lawyers, calling for investigations of prosecutorial misconduct, more oversight of prosecutors, or tougher penalties on lawyers who break the rules. Sometimes, the media may pick up the odd story. But it typically has a one-day life, failing to gain the traction needed to be widely publicized.
But now, four organizations are conducting a campaign do something about the dozens of cases in which prosecutors failed to take the actions demanded by the law and their professional code of ethics.
The Innocence Project, Veritas Initiative, the Innocence Project New Orleans and Voices of Innocence have embarked on a nationwide tour focused on Prosecutorial Oversight. Its objective is to explore policy reforms to discourage overzealous prosecutors from trying to make their own laws.
The tour, which includes stops in Arizona, California, Louisiana, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas, will bring together participants from all aspects of the criminal justice system including legal ethics professors, members of bar disciplinary committees, prosecutors and judges. At the end of the tour, the groups will prepare a report with recommendations for reform.
“We recognize that this is a complex problem. It is not easy to develop internal systems in prosecutors’ offices that effectively distinguish between error and misconduct nor independent institutions outside of their offices that can adequately investigate and remedy misconduct when it occurs,” said Barry Scheck, Co-Director of the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law. The Innocence Project has become celebrated for freeing hundreds of prisoners who were wrongfully convicted.
John Thompson --- who lost his appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court last year and was stripped of his $14 million civil award for the intentional misconduct that caused his wrongful murder conviction and near execution -- will headline forums across the country with policy makers and prosecutors to spark a national dialogue on possible solutions.
“As someone who came within days of being put to death because of the intentional misconduct of prosecutors at the New Orleans District Attorney’s Office, I’m all too familiar with what can go wrong when the enormous power of prosecutors goes unchecked,” said Thompson, Founder and Director of Resurrection After Exoneration and Voices of Innocence.
“My case was not an isolated incident. Of the six men who received the death penalty at the hands of one of my prosecutors, five had their convictions reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct. I know that most prosecutors are as bothered by this behavior as I am, and I call on them to help us find a way to make prosecutors’ offices more accountable,” Thompson said.
Kathleen Ridolfi, professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and Executive Director of the Northern California Innocence Project and the Veritas Initiative, added, “Allowing this type of misconduct to persist undercuts public trust and undermines prosecutors who do their jobs properly. Prosecutors – who are no doubt just as concerned about misconduct as we are – are in an excellent position to help identify and correct improper prosecutorial actions. Their input will be invaluable as we move forward with collaborative discussions focused on solving this problem.”
At each stop on the tour, the groups will release new state specific research illustrating the scope of the problem. This research will mirror research that was released last year in California by the Veritas Initiative in Preventable Error: A Report on Prosecutorial Misconduct in California 1997-2009, which documented 707 instances where an appellate court found misconduct during the 13 year period, but found that only 7 prosecutors were disciplined.
Similar research has been conducted by the Innocence Project in New York State. It concluded that only a tiny fraction of prosecutorial misconduct charges ever result in disciplinary action against the offending attorney.
“There’s no question that prosecutors have tremendous responsibility to protect our safety, but everyone suffers when prosecutors put their zeal for winning above finding the truth. We’ve seen too many situations where the innocent are unjustly punished because of prosecutorial misconduct. The current mechanisms of accountability are not working. These forums are an important step towards reform that is long overdue,” said Angela Davis, professor of law at American University's Washington College of Law and author of Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor.
Meanwhile, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) is collecting information on pending legislation related to the death penalty. For example, at least nine states will consider bills to repeal the death penalty in 2012. In California, a coalition called Taxpayers for Justice has been collecting signatures to place a death penalty repeal initiative on the ballot in November. Other states considering repeal bills are Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania.
Writing articles about prisoners on Death Row is easy. Even after conviction, nagging questions about guilt or innocence often remain. Most of the colorful characters in the original cast are still around. All the suspense of a good whodunit is still there.
That’s the easy part.
The hard part comes when it emerges that an innocent person has been sentenced to die for a crime he didn’t commit. And when the alleged reason is misconduct by the prosecutors.
Doing something about that is the hard part. Because prosecutors are powerful people.
And so it was with Tyrone Noling, who has been sitting on death row since 1990, when he was convicted of murdering an elderly couple.
In 2009, 13 years after the original trial, prosecutors provided defense attorneys with handwritten police notes from the investigations in 1990 in which a witness identified another man as having committed the murders.
But the state is currently refusing to test DNA evidence collected from the crime scene that might place this “other man” at the scene of the crime.
As in the case of Troy Davis, who was put to death in Georgia last year, at the time Noling was charged there was no physical evidence and no witnesses to the alleged crime.
But Andrew Cohen, writing in The Atlantic, points out that when an aggressive investigator took over the case, some witnesses began giving statements against Noling. Cohen adds that all these witnesses have since recanted their statements, claiming they were pressured by the prosecutor.
And the Death Penalty Information Center, in a statement, said, “We pause for a moment to highlight our concern about Noling's death sentence in light of questions raised regarding his prosecution. Noling was not indicted until five years after the…murders when a new local prosecutor took office. That new prosecutor pursued the cold murder case with suspicious vigor according to Noling's accusers, who have since recanted their stories and now claim that they only identified Noling as the murderer in the first place because they were threatened by the prosecutor.”
Nonetheless, Noling was convicted on that testimony and remains on death row.
What to do about it? Well, in such cases, organizations and individuals traditionally circulate petitions and contact their lawmakers. From time to time, we hear from the American Bar Association or the Association of Trial Lawyers, calling for investigations of prosecutorial misconduct, more oversight of prosecutors, or tougher penalties on lawyers who break the rules. Sometimes, the media may pick up the odd story. But it typically has a one-day life, failing to gain the traction needed to be widely publicized.
But now, four organizations are conducting a campaign do something about the dozens of cases in which prosecutors failed to take the actions demanded by the law and their professional code of ethics.
The Innocence Project, Veritas Initiative, the Innocence Project New Orleans and Voices of Innocence have embarked on a nationwide tour focused on Prosecutorial Oversight. Its objective is to explore policy reforms to discourage overzealous prosecutors from trying to make their own laws.
The tour, which includes stops in Arizona, California, Louisiana, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas, will bring together participants from all aspects of the criminal justice system including legal ethics professors, members of bar disciplinary committees, prosecutors and judges. At the end of the tour, the groups will prepare a report with recommendations for reform.
“We recognize that this is a complex problem. It is not easy to develop internal systems in prosecutors’ offices that effectively distinguish between error and misconduct nor independent institutions outside of their offices that can adequately investigate and remedy misconduct when it occurs,” said Barry Scheck, Co-Director of the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law. The Innocence Project has become celebrated for freeing hundreds of prisoners who were wrongfully convicted.
John Thompson --- who lost his appeal before the U.S. Supreme Court last year and was stripped of his $14 million civil award for the intentional misconduct that caused his wrongful murder conviction and near execution -- will headline forums across the country with policy makers and prosecutors to spark a national dialogue on possible solutions.
“As someone who came within days of being put to death because of the intentional misconduct of prosecutors at the New Orleans District Attorney’s Office, I’m all too familiar with what can go wrong when the enormous power of prosecutors goes unchecked,” said Thompson, Founder and Director of Resurrection After Exoneration and Voices of Innocence.
“My case was not an isolated incident. Of the six men who received the death penalty at the hands of one of my prosecutors, five had their convictions reversed because of prosecutorial misconduct. I know that most prosecutors are as bothered by this behavior as I am, and I call on them to help us find a way to make prosecutors’ offices more accountable,” Thompson said.
Kathleen Ridolfi, professor at Santa Clara University School of Law and Executive Director of the Northern California Innocence Project and the Veritas Initiative, added, “Allowing this type of misconduct to persist undercuts public trust and undermines prosecutors who do their jobs properly. Prosecutors – who are no doubt just as concerned about misconduct as we are – are in an excellent position to help identify and correct improper prosecutorial actions. Their input will be invaluable as we move forward with collaborative discussions focused on solving this problem.”
At each stop on the tour, the groups will release new state specific research illustrating the scope of the problem. This research will mirror research that was released last year in California by the Veritas Initiative in Preventable Error: A Report on Prosecutorial Misconduct in California 1997-2009, which documented 707 instances where an appellate court found misconduct during the 13 year period, but found that only 7 prosecutors were disciplined.
Similar research has been conducted by the Innocence Project in New York State. It concluded that only a tiny fraction of prosecutorial misconduct charges ever result in disciplinary action against the offending attorney.
“There’s no question that prosecutors have tremendous responsibility to protect our safety, but everyone suffers when prosecutors put their zeal for winning above finding the truth. We’ve seen too many situations where the innocent are unjustly punished because of prosecutorial misconduct. The current mechanisms of accountability are not working. These forums are an important step towards reform that is long overdue,” said Angela Davis, professor of law at American University's Washington College of Law and author of Arbitrary Justice: The Power of the American Prosecutor.
Meanwhile, the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) is collecting information on pending legislation related to the death penalty. For example, at least nine states will consider bills to repeal the death penalty in 2012. In California, a coalition called Taxpayers for Justice has been collecting signatures to place a death penalty repeal initiative on the ballot in November. Other states considering repeal bills are Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania.
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Democratic Elections in the Middle East: Why the Islamists Win
By Lawrence Davidson
Part I - Two Democratic Elections
There have now been two democratic elections in the Middle East as a consequence of the Arab Spring. One was in Tunisia in October 2011, and the recent staggered elections of December 2011-January 2012 for a lower house of parliament in Egypt.
In both cases Islamist parties did the best. In Tunisia it was the Islamist al-Nahda (Renaissance) party that got 41% of the votes. In Egypt it was Hizb al-hurriya wa al-adala (Freedom and Justice Party), affiliated with country’s Muslim Brotherhood, that got 47% of the votes, while the hard-line Salafi group, the al-Nour (the Light) party got 29%.. In Tunisia the liberal parties came in a collective second with 34% of the votes, but in Egypt they did poorly. The liberal Egyptian Bloc Coalition only managed 8.9% of the vote.
Actually, the biggest surprise was the good showing of the liberals in Tunisia, and not the fact that relatively fair elections put the Islamists in positions of power. No one should be surprised at this result. Why? It has to do with history. While what I describe below is simplified for the sake of brevity, it gives a basically accurate picture of how the past has given us the present we now witness.
Part II - A Very Brief History Lesson
The Middle East has been the home of an evolving Islamic civilization since the 7th century. Civilization means more than just religion and religious practice–it means values, outlooks, mannerisms, habits of thought and behavior. The dynamic nature of this way of life was such that up to, roughly, the 16th century every outside invader that pushed its way into the Middle East ended up being "Islamized." That is, whether they were Turks, Mongols, Crusaders, etc. most ended up adopting an Islamic way of life. But this changed sometime in the late 1500s.
It was about then that the military and economic balance of power between the Islamic world and Christian Europe shifted. From that point on European power allowed incursions into the Middle East by Western invaders who saw Islam and its civilization as inferior. These invaders proved not to be susceptible to "Islamization."
In fact it was at this point that Western ways began to draw at least a certain class of Middle Easterners away from their traditional lifestyle. Those who became Westernized were largely the people who politically, economically, militarily and educationally interacted with the increasingly powerful Europeans. Many of them became secular in their outlook and some developed principled positions supporting liberal, open societies. Some sought to meld Western technology and educational techniques with Islamic tradition. Others, however, obtained leadership positions in which they behaved (and still behave) in corrupt and dictatorial ways.
It is a mistake to think that this process penetrated deeply within Middle Eastern society. One way to think of the result is in terms of a volcanic landscape. Here you have a thin crust of surface material beneath which is a deep pool of magna under building pressure. When the pressure gets high enough the magna breaks through. The thin crust represents Westernized elites, the magna is the great mass of Middle Easterners who have always identified with Islamic civilization and increasingly resent the penetration of Western culture into their lands. Historically, the resulting occasional volcanic eruptions, if you will, have occurred in the form of revolution–a modern example of which is Iran in 1979.
Of course Tunisia and Egypt had their own brief revolutions which led to democratic elections. You can think of these elections as controlled breakthroughs of the Islamic magna. Given the state of society in the Middle East, the results were predictable.
Part III - The Price of Historical Ignorance
On 22 January 2012 Juan Cole wrote a revealing piece on his blog Informed Comment. It was entitled "South Carolina & Gingrich, Egypt & the Muslim Brotherhood." What Cole notes is that you can get a large number of religious fundamentalists swaying the primary election in South Carolina and the media hardly considers it an event to be looked into. But let religious fundamentalists do well in elections in the Middle East and it automatically generates stereotyping and shallow, inaccurate analyses. Thus, Cole notes:
1. "...it is implicitly deemed illegitimate for Egyptians to be religious or vote for a religious party. But it is legitimate for South Carolinians to be religious, to vote on a religious basis, to seek to impose their religious laws on all Americans."
2. What if Egyptians voted for religious parties for reasons other than just religion? Given the shallowness of U.S. media coverage how would we ever know? Yet, polls in Egypt indicate that many Egyptian voters chose the Freedom and Justice Party because the Muslim Brotherhood has a reputation for honesty and a commitment to social justice.
3. And finally, "almost no Egyptians think that the revolution against [the military dictatorship of] Mubarak was made to establish a religious state."
None of this makes much difference to U.S. politicians who usually know little or no relevant history and are therefore oblivious to reality in the Middle East. They are, however, deeply committed to ideologically driven stereotypes and conventions. And there are plenty of special interests out there pushing an Islamophobic message.
How can one ever create reasonable and workable foreign policy under these conditions? The answer is, you can’t. You end up thrashing around this way and that, running scared and talking yourself into war-like scenarios. This is utterly crazy and utterly typical.
Let’s end with a quote from a religious leader who does have a penetrating sense of history, the current Dalai Lama: "Where ignorance is our master there is no possibility of real peace." Alas, that is reality!
Lawrence Davidson is a professor of history at West Chester University in West Chester PA. His academic work is focused on the history of American foreign relations with the Middle East. He also teaches courses in the history of science and modern European intellectual history.
Part I - Two Democratic Elections
There have now been two democratic elections in the Middle East as a consequence of the Arab Spring. One was in Tunisia in October 2011, and the recent staggered elections of December 2011-January 2012 for a lower house of parliament in Egypt.
In both cases Islamist parties did the best. In Tunisia it was the Islamist al-Nahda (Renaissance) party that got 41% of the votes. In Egypt it was Hizb al-hurriya wa al-adala (Freedom and Justice Party), affiliated with country’s Muslim Brotherhood, that got 47% of the votes, while the hard-line Salafi group, the al-Nour (the Light) party got 29%.. In Tunisia the liberal parties came in a collective second with 34% of the votes, but in Egypt they did poorly. The liberal Egyptian Bloc Coalition only managed 8.9% of the vote.
Actually, the biggest surprise was the good showing of the liberals in Tunisia, and not the fact that relatively fair elections put the Islamists in positions of power. No one should be surprised at this result. Why? It has to do with history. While what I describe below is simplified for the sake of brevity, it gives a basically accurate picture of how the past has given us the present we now witness.
Part II - A Very Brief History Lesson
The Middle East has been the home of an evolving Islamic civilization since the 7th century. Civilization means more than just religion and religious practice–it means values, outlooks, mannerisms, habits of thought and behavior. The dynamic nature of this way of life was such that up to, roughly, the 16th century every outside invader that pushed its way into the Middle East ended up being "Islamized." That is, whether they were Turks, Mongols, Crusaders, etc. most ended up adopting an Islamic way of life. But this changed sometime in the late 1500s.
It was about then that the military and economic balance of power between the Islamic world and Christian Europe shifted. From that point on European power allowed incursions into the Middle East by Western invaders who saw Islam and its civilization as inferior. These invaders proved not to be susceptible to "Islamization."
In fact it was at this point that Western ways began to draw at least a certain class of Middle Easterners away from their traditional lifestyle. Those who became Westernized were largely the people who politically, economically, militarily and educationally interacted with the increasingly powerful Europeans. Many of them became secular in their outlook and some developed principled positions supporting liberal, open societies. Some sought to meld Western technology and educational techniques with Islamic tradition. Others, however, obtained leadership positions in which they behaved (and still behave) in corrupt and dictatorial ways.
It is a mistake to think that this process penetrated deeply within Middle Eastern society. One way to think of the result is in terms of a volcanic landscape. Here you have a thin crust of surface material beneath which is a deep pool of magna under building pressure. When the pressure gets high enough the magna breaks through. The thin crust represents Westernized elites, the magna is the great mass of Middle Easterners who have always identified with Islamic civilization and increasingly resent the penetration of Western culture into their lands. Historically, the resulting occasional volcanic eruptions, if you will, have occurred in the form of revolution–a modern example of which is Iran in 1979.
Of course Tunisia and Egypt had their own brief revolutions which led to democratic elections. You can think of these elections as controlled breakthroughs of the Islamic magna. Given the state of society in the Middle East, the results were predictable.
Part III - The Price of Historical Ignorance
On 22 January 2012 Juan Cole wrote a revealing piece on his blog Informed Comment. It was entitled "South Carolina & Gingrich, Egypt & the Muslim Brotherhood." What Cole notes is that you can get a large number of religious fundamentalists swaying the primary election in South Carolina and the media hardly considers it an event to be looked into. But let religious fundamentalists do well in elections in the Middle East and it automatically generates stereotyping and shallow, inaccurate analyses. Thus, Cole notes:
1. "...it is implicitly deemed illegitimate for Egyptians to be religious or vote for a religious party. But it is legitimate for South Carolinians to be religious, to vote on a religious basis, to seek to impose their religious laws on all Americans."
2. What if Egyptians voted for religious parties for reasons other than just religion? Given the shallowness of U.S. media coverage how would we ever know? Yet, polls in Egypt indicate that many Egyptian voters chose the Freedom and Justice Party because the Muslim Brotherhood has a reputation for honesty and a commitment to social justice.
3. And finally, "almost no Egyptians think that the revolution against [the military dictatorship of] Mubarak was made to establish a religious state."
None of this makes much difference to U.S. politicians who usually know little or no relevant history and are therefore oblivious to reality in the Middle East. They are, however, deeply committed to ideologically driven stereotypes and conventions. And there are plenty of special interests out there pushing an Islamophobic message.
How can one ever create reasonable and workable foreign policy under these conditions? The answer is, you can’t. You end up thrashing around this way and that, running scared and talking yourself into war-like scenarios. This is utterly crazy and utterly typical.
Let’s end with a quote from a religious leader who does have a penetrating sense of history, the current Dalai Lama: "Where ignorance is our master there is no possibility of real peace." Alas, that is reality!
Lawrence Davidson is a professor of history at West Chester University in West Chester PA. His academic work is focused on the history of American foreign relations with the Middle East. He also teaches courses in the history of science and modern European intellectual history.
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